


Take Me in Your Arms and Leave the Rest

by omgericzimmermann (HMSLusitania)



Series: 13 Days of Halloween [13]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 13 Days of Halloween, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, October 31st, Suicide mention, the angst is inflicted by jack's mental state
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-19 13:37:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8210530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMSLusitania/pseuds/omgericzimmermann
Summary: After an injury takes Jack out of his short-lived NHL career, he's left drifting. So he buys a house and decides to rebuild it. Fortunately, he's got a cute neighbour to keep him company. Day 13 for the 13 Days of Halloween.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will deal a lot with Jack's poor mental state, particularly with being a hockey robot who can no longer play hockey. There are mentions of suicide, and Jack's overdose, and generally Jack being depressed. But there is a happy ending. Promise. 
> 
> Thanks to Rhysiana for beta reading this one :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For more extensive trigger warnings, see the end notes. Warning, hella spoilers.

“Really? _This_ one?”

Jack shrugs. His mom is the fourth person to ask him this question. First it was the realtor, then it was Parse, then it was Shitty. Now his parents are staring at the old house with big, confused eyes. Jack shrugs because he doesn’t see it the way they do.

The white boards that make up the siding don’t all fit together right. The front porch is a little rotted, one of the windows is cracked. The maple tree in the front yard has deposited orange foliage across the dried and yellow grass. There are browned hydrangea bushes lining the porch. It’s a craftsman from the 1920s give or take, and the For Sale sign in the front yard has a bright red and white SOLD dangling underneath it.

“It’s got character,” Jack says, carrying his box of books up the front steps.

“Or something,” Bob mutters, carrying his own box. “You’re sure you want to live here by yourself, Jack?”

There’s concern in his voice, Jack recognises it more than he acknowledges it. More than he wants to think about it.

“It’ll give me a project,” Jack says. He shrugs and sets his box in the living room. “Besides. It’s not like I’ll really be _alone_ you know? I’m still in Providence, so you know the guys will be around all the time.”

“Right, sure,” Alicia agrees. She sounds like she’s placating him, and Jack knows she is.

The guys won’t be visiting. If they do, it’ll be from a sense of misplaced guilt, and if Jack hears the words “Sorry Cap” one more time he’s going to hit someone.

But he’s off the crutches now, and he’s got the concussion thing all sorted out, and his brand new titanium hip is doing everything it’s supposed to and his titanium knee is getting better, even with Shitty’s occasional comments about “fuckin’ Terminator over here.”

The master bedroom is upstairs, which Jack was well aware of when he purchased the place. There’s still floral wallpaper all over the bedrooms, and it’s probably lath and plaster rather than drywall, but Jack doesn’t mind. It puts the historian in him at ease.

The kitchen is an atrocious shade of mint green that makes his mom wince when she sees it, but she doesn’t say anything. The countertops and floors are grey Formica edged in chrome, the cabinets painted the same ugly green as the walls. The forced air heating sounds like it’s got a death rattle or the black lung, but so does Jack in the heat of summer, so he’s not going to judge.

“You really want to fix this place up?” Bob asks. He’s watching Jack carefully.

“Yeah,” Jack says. He shrugs. “I’m going to start with the porch.”

*

It’s slow going. He has to hire a contractor to look over the structure to make sure he won’t accidentally pull down one of the columns and send the roof toppling down into the front lawn, but then he gets to do the manual labour. He goes to the hardware store, he buys the wood, he buys the power tools, and he brings Shitty along, who comments loudly about how disturbingly well Jack fits in at a hardware store and a lumber yard, and who pegs it all down to Jack’s omnipresent and indefinable Canadian-ness.

But Shitty helps him cart everything back to Jack’s new house (“The Haus 2, bro. It’s like Audrey 2, but not as likely to eat you ’cause it’s not a murderous carnivorous plant thing, right?”) and then looks around the still mostly empty living room. Shitty lets out a low whistle.

“Damn, bro,” he says. “How long do you think it’s been since anyone lived here?”

“The realtor said it’s been in the bank’s possession since the ’50s,” Jack says. He shrugs. “No one wanted to buy it.”

“That’s because no one’s quite as fuckin’ crazy as you are,” Shitty informs him. “Which I love you for, bro, don’t get me wrong or anything. But like. This place is a disaster. And probably mad haunted. You realise that.”

“Ghosts aren’t real, Shits,” Jack says with a tired sigh. It was the same refrain he and Ransom had been insisting on since Samwell, back when Ransom and Holster lived in the attic and Holster and Shitty liked to insist the attic was haunted. Their joint denial was also put down to their general, indefinable Canadian-ness.

Shitty goes on his typical rant in response to Jack’s denial and by the time he leaves, Jack is in better spirits than he has been since – well, since before.

He’s in good enough spirits that he sits in his horribly green kitchen and calls Parse. He answers after a couple rings, sounding tired. Jack realises that Parse had a game that night, and Jack didn’t even – it wasn’t even on his radar.

“Jack?” Parse asks. Jack can picture his face perfectly, one eye half-open, the other scrunched shut. In another life a decade ago, Jack was snuggled up behind him while he made that face, trying to get him to get up. Now it’s Nate, and Jack thinks he can hear Nate grumbling at the other end of the phone.

“Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Jack says, wondering if he should just hang up.

“Nah, it’s fine, it’s only ten,” Parse says. Jack hears sheets rustle and bare feet on wood floors. He thinks he hears the soft paws of a particular ragdoll cat, and then the tell-tale “fwump” of Parse dropping to the sofa in his living room. “What’s up? It’s one am, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Yeah, it’s – Shitty just left.”

“So you’re alone,” Parse says.

“Uh, yeah,” Jack says, not sure why that’s a question. Of course he’s alone. Who else would he be with?

“Okay. You okay?” Parse asks.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Jack says. It’s a rote answer, but for once he almost means it, so he doesn’t feel a well of regret after he says it. “I was thinking – I was thinking about doing it.”

Parse is silent for a long moment.

“Uh, doing what?” he asks finally.

Jack frowns. “Coming out,” he says. “What else would I be--”

“I don’t know, having sex with another human being,” Parse says. The way he says it makes Jack pretty sure that wasn’t his first guess, but neither of them wants to voice his actual first guess. They don’t really have to.

Parse sighs. “So you’re gonna come out? Like full on grand marshal at the parade type out?”

“I don’t know if it’ll go that far,” Jack says. “The organisation says it’ll be easier since I’m not – since I’m retired now.”

“Yeah,” Parse says. “I bet.”

They’re silent for a long moment.

“I won’t out you or Nate,” Jack says.

“Didn’t think you would,” Parse says. He sighs. “But y’know, he’s retiring next year anyway, and then he was gonna do it, and honestly, I was probably going to when he does so we can actually get married, you know?”

“Yeah,” Jack agrees, even though he doesn’t. He’s never felt that strongly about someone, not even Parse, back when they were together.

There’s another beat of silence.

“Hey, Jack?” Parse says. “Ten years ago, it – it was an accident right? You didn’t mean to--”

“I don’t remember,” Jack says, his voice coming out stiff.

He can hear Parse swallow on his end of the phone, and then they say goodnight. Jack takes himself off to bed, his good mood gone, but his resolve strengthened. He’s going to do it. He’s going to come out.

He’s woken the next morning by a knock on the door.

He expects it to be the mailman or the UPS delivery guy, but it’s not. Instead, standing on his porch is a tiny blond man. He’s got huge brown eyes and the perfect smattering of freckles, and a soft golden glow that speaks of a life in the sun. In his hands he’s got a pie.

The most heavenly smells waft from it, apples, cinnamon, sugar, and…maple?

“Did you just move in?” the man asks with the faintest hint of a southern drawl.

“Just last week,” Jack agrees. “Is there maple in that pie?”

“Oh, this old thing?” the man asks. “I just whipped this up when I saw the light on in your house. Thought I’d bring it by. It’s been ages since anyone’s lived here.”

“Yeah, the 1950s, according to the realtor,” Jack says. There’s an awkward pause before Jack remembers to invite him in and let him sit the pie down on the kitchen table. He watches while the man’s huge eyes get impossibly wider while he looks around the minty green kitchen. “I know the colour’s a bit much. I haven’t got around to painting it yet.”

“Are you kiddin’?” the man asks, fixing his smile on Jack. It’s so bright and cheery that it makes Jack’s breath catch. “I love it! Oh. I’m Eric by the way. Most folks call me Dicky or Junior, but, I dunno, I’ve kinda always liked Eric better, you know?”

“Uh, sure,” Jack says. He shudders to think what might have happened to this sunshine man in the event he’d skated onto centre ice and told the team to call him Dicky.

“And what’s your name?” Eric asks, grinning up at Jack.

“Jack,” Jack says. He clears his throat. “Do you, uh, do you live nearby?”

“Oh, yeah, just a stone’s throw away,” Eric says. “So what do you do, Jack?”

He opens a cabinet while he asks, managing to get the one with Jack’s plates on the first try. He pulls out two of them and sets them next to the pie, then finds the silverware drawer like a dowsing rod drawn to water.

“I’m kind of in between things right now,” Jack says, sitting down at the kitchen table and letting Eric serve them each a piece of apple maple pie.

“Oh, me too,” Eric says. “What did you do before?”

“I played hockey,” Jack says. “With the NHL.”

Eric’s eyes go wide again. The crisp October sunlight filters through Jack’s ratty old kitchen curtains left by the previous owners, and turns the flecks in Eric’s eyes shades of chocolate and caramel.

“Why’d you stop?” he asks, forgetting to take a bite of his pie. It’s the best pie Jack has ever tasted.

“I got hit,” Jack says. He swallows his bite of pie and grimaces. “It was the seventh game of the Stanley Cup. They had to, uh, they had to replace my knee and my hip, so I can’t play anymore.”

The problem was his head, at least according to his doctor. They were much more worried about repetitive brain injury and the skull fracture than they were about his knee and hip. If Jack really searched inside himself, that was where he found fear, too. It wasn’t in the idea of not being able to walk again; it was in the idea of not being able to think anymore. He’d been there before with his meds and he had no desire to go back.

“Oh honey, that’s awful,” Eric says. When he realises what he’s said, his cheeks flush and he slaps a hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry! It’s just a southern thing, I’m from Georgia originally and so everyone’s honey or sugar or – oh Lord, you must think I’m just the worst sort of--”

“Worst sort of what?” Jack interrupts, his hackles rising.

“I didn’t mean anything by it!” Eric says. He looks terrified, like he thinks Jack’s going to hit him. “You don’t have to worry, I’m not one of those queers or--”

Maybe it was because of his midnight conversation with Parse, maybe because Jack had thought Eric was cute until they reached this part of their conversation, but Jack can actually feel the storm cloud that’s taken over his face.

“I am,” he snaps.

Eric’s blush doesn’t fade, but he also goes pale at the same time, leaving his face a splotchy mess of cream and rose petals.

“Oh!” he squeaks. “R-really? You’re – you’re one of the – I – I should go.”

Eric scrambles out of his kitchen like a frightened mouse and after a second Jack hears the front door open and shut. Eric had left the pie pan on the table.

Jack grumbles but he can’t bring himself to throw the pie away. Instead he sits on his new couch with the pie pan and turns on the History Channel, hoping for anything to distract him. It doesn’t work.

*

Shitty comments on the advisability of starting external home repairs in October in New England, but Jack doesn’t listen. He instead starts pulling apart his deck and relaying the new boards once he’s got the foundation parts figured out. He thinks he’ll forgo the stain, and just seal the cedar planks he’s picked up.

He’s mentally debating sanding methods, because part of him wants to do it by hand with a hand sander, part of him thinks he needs to get this done before it snows so that the sealant will actually dry and so he should get an industrial sander, but he’s interrupted by Eric appearing in his yard, sheepish as hell.

He’s got a tray of muffins this time, and can’t meet Jack’s eye.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” he says, extending the tray of muffins like a peace offering. “It’s just – where I’m from, they – guys like us don’t get to – they’ll beat it out of you. Not _you_ in particular, but like anyone who seems like they might be – I guess what I’m trying to say is, uh, I’m – well, I’m gay.”

Jack takes the muffins and raises his eyebrow. He doesn’t mention that it had been his assumption the first time he spoke to Eric, because that seems unnecessary after the way their first meeting went.

“I’ve never told anyone that before,” Eric says. His pretty brown eyes are huge again, like he’s not sure if he should slap a hand over his mouth or if he should laugh or if he should run away screaming.

“Ever?” Jack asks, feeling his eyebrows creep upwards.

“Not even myself,” Eric says, the confused look still on his face.

Jack feels his hackles drop and he takes one of the muffins. Cranberry it looks like.

“How old are you?” he asks, leaning against his half-demolished porch to peel the wrapper off.

“I’ll be twenty-four in May,” Eric says. He leans next to him but doesn’t eat a muffin. “How old are you?”

“I turned twenty-eight in August,” Jack says.

“So you’ve done it all, right?” Eric asks. “You’ve had a boyfriend and been in love and all that stuff?”

Jack isn’t quite sure how to answer his sort of odd neighbour. Sort of odd, but also sort of sweet and endearing and definitely cute. So he shrugs.

“I’ve had a boyfriend,” he says. “Kent. Do you follow hockey?”

“No, mostly I just bake,” Eric says.

“Do you work in a bakery?” Jack asks.

“No, I’m-”

“Oh right, you’re between things,” Jack says, remembering their conversation earlier.

“But I did,” Eric says. “I used to work in a bakery over on Main St.”

“Why’d you stop?” Jack asks. Eric just shrugs.

*

“Bro, who made these muffins?” Shitty asks, swallowing one of Eric’s cranberry muffins whole. “I think I’m gonna come.”

“Don’t be crass,” Lardo scolds, smacking him in the arm. Then she takes a bite of the muffin. “Oh, holy fuck.”

“My neighbour Eric,” Jack says. He tries not to picture the embarrassed blush that would cover Eric’s cheeks, make his freckles stand out, if he could hear Shitty’s comments about his baking. “He used to work for a bakery.”

“Jesus fuck, why in fuck’s name did he stop?” Shitty asks.

“Do you swear that much in court?” Jack asks, eating another muffin

“Contract lawyer, bruh,” Shitty reminds him. “I sit silently in my cubicle or at a conference table.”

“Poor thing,” Lardo says, and Shitty sniffs theatrically. “So baking neighbour Eric. Is he also cute neighbour Eric?”

“Maybe,” Jack admits, feeling himself start to blush. But he’s not going to let himself get attached to a completely inexperienced guy with apparently severe internalised homophobia. Jack is just not going to think about how exactly his type Eric is.

He’s managed to convince himself of this by the next time Eric shows up. He hasn’t brought anything this time, he just appears on Jack’s lawn when Jack has his back turned and clears his throat.

“How’s it going?” Eric asks, nodding at Jack’s porch.

“Pretty well,” Jack says. He’s not really surprised when Eric hops up onto one of the bare cross beams and leans against the wall like he belongs there.

“Can I ask you something?” Eric says. He bites his lip, nervous, and Jack tries not to find the gesture adorable.

“Sure,” he says.

“Why’d you buy this house?” Eric asks. Jack sighs. “I just mean, it’s such a fixer-upper, it’s in a weird neighbourhood where no one lives--”

“You live here,” Jack points out. There’s the blush again.

“Well sure, but I’m pretty sure someone died in this house,” Eric says.

“Did they?” Jack asks. The realtor hadn’t mentioned that.

“A long time ago,” Eric says. Jack wants to be morbid, ask for more details, but he figures he’ll get Shitty to look into it.

“You didn’t bring anything to eat,” Jack says instead, hoping to change the subject.

“Well, how could I?” Eric asks. “I left my pie pan here!”

“I think I’ve got apples,” Jack says.

“Then I think I’ve got to make you some apple pie,” Eric says. “Can I use your kitchen?”

“I’m pretty sure everything that comes out of it is going to taste like mint,” Jack replies, giving him a smile. Eric rolls his eyes fondly and heads for the kitchen. Jack can hear him shuffling around the kitchen, hears him humming to himself. It sounds a lot like Aretha Franklin.

The pie Eric produces too fast to be humanly possible doesn’t taste like mint, but Eric threatens to make him mint chocolate cookies in the near future if he keeps that up.

“It’s called chirping,” Jack says. “It’s a hockey thing.”

“I’m pretty sure the hockey players of the United States and Canada did not invent pigtail pulling, Mr. Zimmermann,” Eric says.

“Who says they didn’t, Mr.--”

He pauses, realising he doesn’t know Eric’s last name.

“Bittle,” he supplies. “Eric Richard Bittle the whateverth, since every firstborn man in my family’s been named Eric Richard Bittle for forever.”

Jack smiles and takes another bite of his pie.

Eric shows up a few more times while Jack works on the porch, but then he finishes it and has to start working on the inside. Jack decides to start with the bedrooms upstairs. He’s not sure how his new knee is going to take winter, so he wants to get some of it done before he has to confine himself to sleeping on the pull-out couch for the season after he loses the ability to climb the stairs.

Jack surveys the upstairs of his house. There are three bedrooms and only the one he lives in has been cleaned properly since the last owners left. Not that Jack’s room looks particularly lived in. He makes his bed crisply every morning out of habit, even fluffs his pillows so that it looks untouched. He has a single bookcase full of books, but that lives in the den. His room is mostly barren. Just a bed.

 _A billet_ , his brain supplies. He’s treating his own house as a place where he can just rest his head, like it’s somewhere he won’t be staying long. He’s never stayed anywhere long, he realises. The first fifteen years at home don’t count, and then it was billet families, then it was back home for a year and a half, then it was a year in the dorms at Samwell, then it was three years at the Haus, then it was four years in downtown Providence, during which time he was almost never home because he was always on roadies or doing press events, and now he’s got this house and he’s still treating it the same way. Like it’s a waiting room or something.

Jack just wished he knew what he was waiting for.

He decides to start instead with the room across the hall. There’s no furniture left, but there is a single box in the closet. Jack drags it out to deal with later, and inspects the rest of the room. It’s dusty and the wallpaper is starting to peel off at the top edges. But the house has good bones, good floors. He’ll probably have to replace the lath and plaster at some point, but for the time being, he’ll settle for stripping the wallpaper.

He’s not really sure how to go about that, or how to search for that on Google, and he’s too keyed up to call Shitty about it, so he just grabs the top peeling corner and pulls.

It comes off in a thick sheet. He imagines it must be because the person who put it up had done it in a hurry, without much attention to detail. It can’t be the original wallpapering, since the pattern is something right out of _Leave it to Beaver_ rather than the 1920s when the house was built. The paper starts to build up on the floor, and Jack suddenly wonders how one is supposed to dispose of wallpaper. Can he just put it in the trash? Does he have to take it to the dump specifically?

He’s about to go find the answers to these questions when he gets to a better glued patch. He runs his hands over it looking for air pockets and finds one right over a dent. Jack frowns and digs his nails under the edge of the papering, slowly tearing it off. This patch doesn’t come off in nice strips, except right over the dent.

Jack drops the paper and scrambles back from the wall, bile rising in his throat. He’s got a pretty strong stomach most of the time. He’s had to, in order to survive playing professional hockey. He’d listened to their description of everything that had happened to his leg, and everything the doctors had needed to do to fix it, all without feeling a single shred of nausea. But the blood on the wall is still red. The blood shouldn’t still be red, should it? And the dent – the dent looks an awful lot like a bullet hole.

The bile rises in Jack’s throat and he backs out of the room, his heart starting to beat wildly in his chest. His palms have gone sweaty and cold, and he can feel his hands start to shake. He stumbles down the stairs and presses his back against the living room wall, drawing his knees up to his chest and gripping them so tightly with his hands that his fingers go white. He can’t breathe, and the walls are getting closer, and he _can’t breathe—_

“Jack? Jack, oh my goodness, sugar, are you okay?”

Jack can’t even look up to see Eric until he’s crouching right in front of Jack, his eyes huge in concern. Jack hadn’t even heard the front door open, he was so far gone.

“Jack? Jack, breathe,” Eric says. One hand hovers above Jack’s knee, but he doesn’t touch. “Jack, look at me.”

Jack manages to meet his eye, but he’s so ashamed that Eric’s found him like this when he’s having a panic attack.

“Just follow my breathing,” Eric says, inhaling deeply and obviously. Jack can’t breathe in, but he does let out the breath he’s holding. His chest deflates and he swallows nervously. “In, and out. Come on, Jack, honey, you can do it.”

“I can’t do anything,” Jack mumbles, but he breathes in, and out, and slowly he manages to unclench his hands from his knees and straighten out his leg, since it’s hurting awfully from being in this position.

“Now I’m sure that’s not true,” Eric says, standing up. “I’m gonna make some mint chocolate chip cookies now, I don’t suppose you’d like to help?”

“I can’t bake,” Jack says, using the wall to pull himself up.

“Then you can just sit there and look pretty,” Eric says, leading the way into Jack’s kitchen and making himself right at home amongst the mint green walls. Jack wants to ask Eric to touch him, just hold his hand or something, anything to remind Jack that he’s physically present, that he didn’t die when he was eighteen, but he doesn’t know how. He settles for sitting at his kitchen table and watching while Eric flits around the room, finding mint extract Jack didn’t know he owned, a bag of chocolate chips Shitty had left behind the last time he’d come to visit, and finally, Eric starts mixing cookies.

“How did you know what to do?” Jack asks.

“Oh,” Eric says, flushing. “My kid brother used to get panic attacks all the time. We never called them panic attacks or anything, though--”

“For the same sorts of reasons you hadn’t told anyone you were gay until two weeks ago?” Jack asks.

Eric sighs. “You know how it is. Granddaddy fought in the war and all he sent home was a service weapon, so my daddy had to grow up being the man of the house, and all that.”

The mention of Eric’s grandfather’s service weapon – presumably another Eric Richard Bittle – makes Jack think of the bloodstain on his wall upstairs.

“Can I ask why you--” Eric starts.

“You were right,” Jack says. He runs his hands through his own hair, trying to force himself to acknowledge the texture, the slippery feeling of the soft black strands through his fingers, tries to make himself be grounded, but there wouldn’t be anything wrong if he was able to ground himself. “Someone did die in the upstairs bedroom. I was peeling off the wallpaper and there’s this giant bloodstain and a bullet hole.”

Eric stops stirring the batter, and covers his mouth in horror.

But now Jack can’t stop talking, which is not a problem he’s ever had in his entire life.

“And it just made me remember, I was dead,” Jack says. “For two minutes when I was seventeen. I – I overdosed on anxiety medication, and I died.”

Eric sets the batter bowl on the counter and pulls the other chair away from the kitchen table. It squeaks across the linoleum and Eric sits, tucking one foot under himself. His eyes are wet when he pulls Jack’s hand away from his head and wraps both his hands around it. His hands are cold, but it’s grounding. It’s solid.

“Sometimes,” Jack starts, sucking in a breath and holding it. He’s never told anyone this, not even his therapist. “Sometimes I have trouble believing I ever actually came back, and that I’m not still dead.”

“Oh Jack,” Eric breathes. He takes one of his hands off Jack’s and cups it against his face. “Honey, you are so alive.”

Jack meets his eyes finally, and aside from the fact Eric looks like he’s about to cry on Jack’s behalf, his face is open and honest and Jack believes him.

When Eric finally finishes baking the cookies, they end up sitting together on Jack’s couch watching the History Channel, and sometime around midnight, Eric nods off with his head on Jack’s shoulder. He’s gone in the morning when Jack wakes up, but there’s a yellow sticky note stuck to Jack’s door that says, “I’ll be back later – ERB.”

*

Eric doesn’t really…go away after that. Jack manages to stomach the rest of the upstairs room by taking a sledgehammer to the walls without looking, removing the remains of the poor soul who’d died upstairs and carting it off to the dump in one fell swoop. Once the walls of the upstairs room are out of the house, all Jack has left is the box he’d pulled out of the closet, but he keeps letting himself put that off. Eric doesn’t necessarily _encourage_ his procrastination, but he doesn’t argue either.

“I just think it’s sort of weird, going through a dead person’s things, y’know?” he says. “Especially when you didn’t know them.”

“Yeah,” Jack agrees. It reminds him that he was going to get Shitty to look into who it was that died in his house. He sends a text before he can forget and goes back to gutting a sugar pumpkin, as he’s been instructed.

“Make sure the seeds don’t get mixed in,” Eric says, swiping a few of the slimy white pods out of the pumpkin guts. His fingers brush Jack’s and it sends a jolt of electricity down Jack’s spine. From the way Eric flushes, he thinks maybe the feeling was mutual.

“My mom used to roast them,” Jack says. “The seeds.”

“Ooh, absolutely!” Eric enthuses, his eyes lighting up. “Roast ’em up with some cinnamon and sugar? Then we could put them on top of the whipped cream.”

“Whipped cream?” Jack asks. He thinks briefly about what his nutritionist would say, but then he remembers he doesn’t have a nutritionist anymore. He has a stationary bike in his basement because his knee and hip aren’t well enough for him to go running yet, and he goes to the gym a few times a week to lift weights, but he doesn’t have a nutritionist. It’s a totally foreign concept to him.

“Are you telling me you haven’t been eating pumpkin pie with whipped cream on it?” Eric asks, aghast.

“Uh,” is Jack’s only response.

“Wait, let me guess. You haven’t been eating pumpkin pie at all,” Eric says, rolling his eyes. “What am I gonna do with you?”

“Keep me,” Jack mumbles. Eric doesn’t really hear him, which is for the best.

“What did you say?” Eric asks.

“Um,” Jack starts, but he’s saved by a knock on the door. “I should go get that.”

“Mmhmm,” Eric agrees, nodding and turning back to the pie crust he’s mixing.

Jack ducks into the hall and to the front door. He opens it and is shocked to find Shitty.

“Hey!” Shitty exclaims, throwing his arms around him tightly and squeezing. “I’m just on my way through to New York! Thought I’d stop in and say what’s up and see if your cute neighbour’s brought any more muffins over.”

Jack feels his face burn bright red.

“He’s in the kitchen, so I’m pretty sure he heard you say that,” Jack grumbles.

“Oh good. I want to meet the magnificent bastard,” Shitty says. “And, you know, have his children. What is that smell?”

“The start of pumpkin pie,” Jack says, leading the way to the kitchen. He’s not sure how he’s going to warn Eric about Shitty, but it turns out to be unnecessary since Eric isn’t there. Jack frowns and glances at the back door, which has clearly been jostled. There’s a yellow sticky note stuck to the glass that says he’s run to the store for more butter.

“Sorry, Shits, guess you don’t get to meet him,” Jack says. “But I just texted you.”

“Yeah, brah, I got it,” Shitty says. “I couldn’t do any googling since I was driving, but I’ll let you know. Someday, I’ll even teach you how to use the Google yourself, old man. How you managed to graduate college is beyond me.”

“I know how to use the internet,” Jack protests. He even has an Instagram, but he’d rather break his other knee than tell Shitty that. Shitty would be too proud, too over emotional, too involved in the page as soon as he found it. Jack doesn’t want that. “And I got through college because there are these wonderful things called libraries.”

Shitty heaves a sigh and flops into one of the kitchen chairs. He picks up one of the mint chocolate chip cookies from the other day and chews with a blissful expression on his face. “So how are you, man?”

“I’m okay,” Jack says. “I’ve been thinking I might come out.”

“To Boston and visit me and Lards?” Shitty asks, his eyes lighting up.

“I meant _out_ ,” Jack says.

“Oh,” Shitty says, his expression morphing. “Oh shit. Seriously? Jack, you’d be the first out NHL player.”

Jack nods, although it feels hollow. He’s not an NHL player. Not anymore. Now he’s a weird recluse with titanium joints in a falling-down house where someone killed themselves sixty years ago, and the only people he talks to are his friends who live in a different city and his equally sort of weird neighbour who shows up uninvited and unannounced – although definitely not unwelcome.

“What prompted that?” Shitty asks. “Someone special you don’t want to hide? Like a sweet blond guy who bakes?”

“How do you know Eric’s blond?” Jack asks, picking up one of the cookies as well.

Shitty raises an eyebrow. “Because it’s you. Get me a picture of him, would you, if you’re gonna try to prove me wrong. Is that why? Are you guys getting serious?”

“We’re not dating,” Jack says. But no one’s ever been able to talk him out of a panic attack like that, and he sort of hopes they might. “And no, I was planning to before I even met Eric.”

“Why?” Shitty asks. When Jack gives him a look, he course corrects. “No, I mean, why come out? Why not just walk around with your presumably adorable boyfriend, fuck what everyone says?”

Jack sighs. The biggest reason is so kids like him and Parse back when they were in the Q can feel that much safer as part of the hockey culture. But that’s too true and too clichéd.

“Nate’s going to come out when he retires next year,” Jack says, which is also true. “I kind of want to help take the heat off, because it’s not like he and Parse are the only gay guys in the NHL.”

Shitty nods. “That should be a fun press conference. Some reporter asshole asking Nate if he thinks it’s a good idea to come out and Nate just laughing and pointing out he’s got three Stanley Cups and a smokin’ hot fiancé and they can all fuck right off.”

Jack offers a laugh, but Shitty’s got a point. Nate’s made his name, so has Parse. Whatever Jack and Parse were to each other, however good they were together in the Q, in the NHL, Parse is part of Parser-and-Swoops, three-time Stanley Cup-winning C and A of the Aces, where they’ve created the Aces record book, just the two of them. Jack coming out won’t even be a blip on the radar. He’s just Bad Bob’s son, you know, the one who OD’d on coke or something and then fell off the face of the planet, and then turned up on some expansion team in Rhode Island and, like, died or something.

Shitty doesn’t realise any of this is going through Jack’s head. Instead he tells him to pass on his regards to Eric once he gets back, and hits the road.

Jack’s still a wreck by the time Eric gets back with a plastic grocery bag full of butter.

“Oh, sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Eric asks, sitting in Shitty’s abandoned chair and scooting right up next to him. He’s got his hand on the inside of Jack’s knee, and it’s either warmer than usual or Jack’s colder than usual, but either way it feels nice. “Who was at the door?”

“My friend from college,” Jack says. “On his way through to New York. He was sorry to miss you. He likes your baking.”

“Well, that’s very nice of him,” Eric says, patting Jack’s knee and then taking his hand back. Jack doesn’t know how to ask him to leave it there instead. “But I’m guessing that’s not why you look like you’re gonna be sick.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life,” Jack says.

Eric snorts. “Honey, you are preaching to the choir. The only thing I’ve ever known is that I want someone to love me.”

“Yeah, but you’re still on the better side of twenty-five,” Jack points out. “I’m going to be thirty in two years, and I thought I had a career and now I don’t know what to--”

He’s going to work himself into another panic attack if he keeps this up, but Eric’s hand is soothing where his fingers are brushing across the back of Jack’s hand. It’s even sending electricity down Jack’s spine again.

“I’ve always played hockey,” Jack says, in his attempt to explain. “I’ve been on the ice since before I could walk, and now I can’t skate. There’s – there’s nothing else I can do.”

“Why would you think that?” Eric asks, genuine confusion in his eyes.

“Never caught a SportsCenter deconstruction of a hockey game, huh?” Jack asks. Eric shakes his head. “I’m a ‘hockey robot.’ And now that I can’t do that, what use am I?”

“I always kinda liked robots,” Eric says. “In the Superman comics, you know?”

Jack shakes his head, because he’s never read a comic book.

“Alright, so you went to college. What did you study?” Eric asks.

“History,” Jack says.

“You could be a history teacher,” Eric suggests. “I think even I could stay awake in a history class you taught.”

“I’m bad with people,” Jack replies.

“Hm, well, did you study anything else?” Eric asks. “Maybe art or poetry? I can see you as a poet.”

“Photography,” Jack says. He takes a deep breath, because talking to Eric has become the surest way to make him feel calmer. “I studied photography.”

Eric beams and then fumbles in his pocket for something. He pulls out a slightly creased picture of himself. In it, he’s practically glowing in warm yellow light streaming through the window. The shirt he’s wearing is pale blue, almost the same colour as Jack’s eyes, and his face is flushed from the pie he’s holding in a pair of oven mitts. He’s not smiling exactly, but he seems satisfied, radiant. The only thing Jack would change about the picture is that Eric’s eyes are mostly closed, so it’s hard to see the brown.

“Can I keep this?” Jack asks.

“Well, yeah, that’s sort of the idea,” Eric says, suddenly shy. “Isn’t that – isn’t that what people do when they’re goin’ together?”

Jack takes the picture gently and sets it down on the kitchen table. He’s not nearly as gentle as he means to be when he cups Eric’s face in both hands and kisses him. Eric inhales sharply in shock, and Jack almost pulls back, but Eric melts against him, nearly climbing into Jack’s lap in an effort to get closer.

They finally break apart when neither of them can breathe, and Eric lets out a breathy giggle. Jack wants to go right back to kissing him but Eric intervenes, brushing his thumb across Jacks lips like he’s in awe. And, sure, it’s been a very long time since Jack kissed anyone, but he’s also pretty sure that was Eric’s first kiss.

“Uh, sorry, was that okay? Jack asks.

“ _Yes,_ ” Eric says. “Yes, absolutely. I just need a minute to catch my breath.”

Jack grins at him and then softly presses his lips against Eric’s again. This time Eric does climb into his lap, sitting across Jack’s knees with his arms wrapped around Jack’s shoulders. Jack doesn’t remember the last time he felt this good about something.

When Eric finally goes home for the night, Jack starts for the stairs. He pauses after he’s gone one step. It’s started raining outside and his knee is screaming in protest. With a tired sigh, he shuffles back to his living room and drops to the couch instead, pulling a quilt over himself. He tries to hold onto the good feeling Eric left, but there’s a sense of despair creeping over him. His life was not supposed to be like this.

He wakes with a jolt around three in the morning. There’s someone in his house.

He can hear the footsteps creaking on the floorboards above his head and sits up. He can probably take any intruder who might be there, but he doesn’t want to have to. And then there’s the question of how they got in, because Jack’s couch is right next to the only stairwell.

Jacks’ heart hammers in his chest while he stares at the ceiling. Flakes of plaster dust fall from the hairline cracks under the footsteps, and then he hears a creak on the stairs. He hasn’t thrown up from nerves in a very long time, but he’s about to as the steps come down the stairs. Jack stares at his stairwell, eyes huge. The footsteps are coming around the corner. He’s going to see them any second and then he hears the distinctive creak of the midway landing and sees –

Nothing.

There’s no one there.

Jack can’t go back to sleep after that. He retreats to the kitchen, wrapped up in a blanket, and makes a pot of coffee. He texts Shitty.

==Shitty==

 **Me:** Hey I got a picture of Eric. Also how’s the research going about my house?

 **Shitty:** Jackie it’s 3 in the morning

 **Shitty:** Also it’s going poorly since there’s nothing on google and I’m gonna have to go old school on it.

 **Shitty:** Also send me that damn picture.

==

Jack text Shitty a copy of the picture and waits for him to exclaim, which he does.

==Shitty==

 **Shitty:** Goddamn he’s just as adorable as I thought he would be. Congrats. Are you still “not dating”?

 **Me:** We kissed.

==

Shitty just sends a string of heart eyes emojis.

Eric shows up at the crack of dawn, which in mid-October is around nine am. Jack’s so glad to see him, he wraps him up in a huge hug.

“Hi, honey,” Eric says. He sounds surprised, but Jack doesn’t care.

“Hey,” Jack mumbles, his face buried in Eric’s stomach. Eric winds his fingers through Jack’s hair.

“Everything alright?” Eric asks.

“Yeah, there was just someone in my house,” Jack says. He doesn’t really want to admit he believes his house is haunted, because he doesn’t want to admit he believes in ghosts. Especially not to his impossibly cute sort-of boyfriend.

“What do you mean, there was someone in your house?” Eric demands. “Did you call the police?”

“No,” Jack says. “They, uh, they disappeared.”

Eric still looks horribly concerned and it makes Jack want to cringe. He manages not to, but it’s hard.

“Jack, is your house haunted?” Eric asks.

“Well, someone died here,” Jack points out.

“Did you find anything of theirs?” Eric asks.

Jack doesn’t mention the blood in the upstairs room.

“There was a box,” he says instead.

They go upstairs, Jack’s knee protesting the whole way, and find the box in Jack’s upstairs closet. Jack pulls it open and finds almost nothing. There’s a couple of newspapers dated from early months in 1951, and there’s a set of drinking glasses with blue rims and bubbled glass. There’s a few pieces of Tupperware and a pie plate. Nothing special.

“Looks like it’s just stuff the previous owners left behind,” Eric says.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees, but he’s a little disappointed there’s nothing else, nothing more definitive. He wants to know who his ghost is.

He doesn’t get his answer. Instead, he gets ESPN covering the end of an Aces game where they’ve just won, and Parse and Nate are on the screen laughing about something the interviewer’s just said. He’s glad Eric’s there when it happens, because he doesn’t love Parse, he never really did, but he still…he still wishes it was him in every way that matters.

“Yeah, yeah, you know, I think we’re primed for a really solid season,” Parse says in his best PR voice. “The boys are coming out strong this season and I feel like we’ve got a really great shot at playing into June.”

“And Jordan, this is your last season, right?” the interviewer asks.

“Yeah,” Nate agrees. “It’s gonna suck not getting to play next to this asshole every day, but I think I’ll just marry him instead or something.”

He ruffles Parse’s hair affectionately and Jack’s stomach goes cold. Eric’s jaw drops. Jack’s phone buzzes and he knows it’s a text from Shitty asking if he saw.

The interviewer laughs nervously.

“That’s pretty funny. You two have made a name for yourselves as really solid teammates, I’m sure a lot of people make jokes about you two--”

“No, the wedding’s August 9th,” Parse interrupts. “We’ve already booked the venue.”

The interviewer flounders for a response, and comes up with nothing. Jack turns off the TV and finds himself inadvertently checking Twitter, since the PR people for the Falcs had made him get one. It’s full of a mix of things (“Congrats! Can’t wait to catch the garter!” his dad has tweeted at Parse) that range from congratulations to stunned disbelief to blatant homophobia.

Jack’s fingers are shaking as he types out, “@therealkvp Hey, I thought we agreed I got to go first this time.”

“Sweetheart?” Eric asks, pulling the phone out of Jack’s hands and replacing it with one of his hands. The other rests on Jack’s thigh in a show of comfort. “One of them was your ex-boyfriend, huh?”

“Two guesses which,” Jack manages.

“I’d bet it’s the blond,” Eric says. He bumps his nose against Jack’s cheek and presses his lips against it.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees. Not that Nate’s not cute, but he’s not Jack’s type.

Eric nuzzles against Jack’s neck and squeezes his thigh. “Do you need me to distract you for a second?”

“Yes, please,” Jack says, and then Eric’s lips are on his and he’s being pressed back into the couch cushions, a lapful of Eric Bittle at his disposal. It almost makes up for Parse going behind his back like that.

Eric stays the night again, in the most innocent way possible. He sleeps curled up against Jack’s chest, looking small and vulnerable, and Jack can’t believe there wasn’t someone before him. He can’t fathom that no one until him has wanted Eric, wanted to hold him like this, or curl up on a couch, or spend hours kissing him. It just doesn’t make sense.

Eric smiles sleepily at him when they wake up, fine crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. Jack’s known him slightly less than a month, but he wants to do this every morning. He wants to spend every morning waking up next to him, watching the crinkles at the corners of his eyes get deeper as they get older. They haven’t even had sex yet, but Jack is pretty sure this is what love is supposed to feel like.

“What are you up to today?” Eric asks, giving him a soft kiss. Jack is a little awed that Eric doesn’t have morning breath, because that just doesn’t seem fair. Not that he’s going to complain.

“I don’t know,” Jack says. He should probably work on his house, since that’s been his project. But he doesn’t really want to. He wants to be outside. He _wants_ to go for a run, but he knows his knee’s not ready to tolerate that. He should also probably check Twitter to see if there’s been any fallout from his addition to Parse and Nate’s coming out. But he kind of just wants to go for a walk.

“I found your camera,” Eric says. “The real fancy one? I know you said before that you liked photography. Do you still do that ever?”

Jack considers. Maybe that’s what he’ll do. He’ll go on a nature walk and take actual pictures. Something he can use to decorate the house. After all, there’s nothing quite like autumn in New England.

“I think I will,” he says. “Want to come?”

“The cold doesn’t agree with me,” Eric says, stretching out on Jack’s bed in his borrowed oversized Falconer’s t-shirt embossed with a 1 and the name Zimmermann. Jack lets his eyes trace along the column of Eric’s throat, across his slender shoulders, over his surprisingly compact torso, down his legs.

“Make a boy blush, starin’ like that,” Eric says, his voice low. “All wolf eyes and such.”

“Wolf eyes?” Jack repeats, raising his eyebrow and shifting lower down the bed. He wraps his hand around one of Eric’s ankles and lifts his leg just high enough he can kiss his calf. Eric doesn’t squirm but his breath hitches. He’s watching Jack from the pillows with half-lidded eyes, one hand playing with the bottom of his shirt, the other gripping the sheets while Jack kisses higher up his leg.

“Hungry wolf eyes,” Eric says. His face all the way down his neck is glowing red and his breath hitches again when Jack kisses his hip.

“Can I--” Jack starts.

“Lord, yes,” Eric breathes.

It’s an hour later that they finally get out of bed. Eric’s all loose limbs and liquid affection, enveloping Jack like a second skin while they make their way downstairs. They have coffee and scrambled eggs and the whole time Eric keeps glancing over at him and then grinning, giggling, and blushing all at once.

“What?” Jack asks, incapable of not picking up Eric’s mood. It’s infectious and stunning.

“I didn’t even know people could do that with their tongues,” Eric says. His face is somewhere between devious and bashful.

“We can go try again,” Jack suggests, fully ready to spend the entire day in bed with Eric. Maybe with a pit stop for condoms and lube at the drugstore, but other than that.

“No, you go on your walk and take your pictures,” Eric says, resting his elbows on the table so he can hold his coffee cup up to his mouth more effectively. “I’ll stay here and bake a pie.”

“Try not to get any mint in it,” Jack recommends, kissing him thoroughly enough that they’re both a little winded when he steps back.

“I’m pretty sure it’s not the paint on your kitchen walls that’s haunted, Mr. Zimmermann!” Eric calls after him while Jack laughs and ducks out into the crisp October air. His breath clouds in front of him, mist hanging a few feet off the ground. For a second, he entertains the idea of having a dog, because the dog would be completely invisible in the fog. He snaps a picture of the old Victorian house across the street in the grey light and heads for the creek and the copse of trees that stand a few blocks from his house. The damp orange leaves fill the viewfinder on his camera, as well as the bare branches and the swirls and eddies of fallen yellow birch leaves that clog the creek. It’s enchanting.

Finally, when he’s nearly used up a roll of film, he pulls out his phone. There’s notifications from Twitter, but he doesn’t really care about those. He checks his texts instead.

==Shitty==

 **Shitty:** HOLY MOTHER FUCKING CHRIST DID YOU SEE PARSE AND NATE’S INTERVIEW

 **Shitty:** JACK DID YOU SEE

 **Shitty:** Oh. Just saw your twitter.

 **Shitty:** Told your dad I had dibs on the garter.

 **Shitty:** …Jack?

 **Shitty:** Uh, so I found something on your house. I’ll bring it by on my way back to Boston this weekend.

 **Shitty:** out of curiosity, did you take that picture of Eric?

==

Jack sighs and shoots back a response that informs him that no, he hadn’t. Then he flips over to his dad’s message.

==Papa==

 **Papa:** that was very brave and very subtle of you, Jack.

 **Papa:** you know your mom and I are so proud of you, right?

 **Papa:** we love you so much.

 **Papa:** and your mom says we want to meet this boy you’ve been telling Shitty about.

==

Jack decides that he’s definitely not looking at Twitter after that, because his dad only drops the pride thing into casual conversation if he thinks Jack’s in trouble.

Finally, he opens the message from Parse.

==Kenny==

 **Kenny:** For fuck’s sake Zimms it’s not –

 **Kenny:** Look, it wasn’t about being first.

 **Kenny:** I just – I was trying to protect you

 **Kenny:** because I’m the youngest captain to win the cup, and me, your dad, and Uncle Wayne are tied for best player, and

 **Kenny:** I just want to make it better for kids like us back when we were in the Q and

 **Kenny:** I’m so sorry about everything that’s happened to you, Jack.

 **Me:** I just wanted to do something that mattered for once in my life, Kent.

==

Jack tries not to be short with Eric when he gets back to the house, but it’s not easy after everything. He likes their little bubble in his haunted house and mint kitchen, with Eric’s radiance.

Eric’s still there, thankfully, and in addition to a pie, there are cookies and another tray of cranberry muffins. Jack didn’t think he was gone long enough for that, but Eric hasn’t ceased surprising him yet.

“Can I see your pictures?” he asks, wrapping his arms around Jack from behind and stretching on his toes to hook his chin over Jack’s shoulder.

“I have to develop them first,” Jack says. “I’ve still got a couple shots left though, if you want to stand over there.”

He points towards Eric’s baking and Eric goes with a fond shake of his head. Jack snaps the picture, then takes another just in case. He feels a little better after that and realises he’ll have to turn one of the upstairs bedrooms into a darkroom. He decides it’ll be the one the previous house resident didn’t use for his suicide.

Even as he thinks it, he realises he doesn’t actually know those details. He doesn’t _know_ that the previous resident was a man, and he doesn’t _know_ that it was suicide. It might have been murder. It might have been an accident. It might have been a woman. But Jack can’t help but feel deep in his soul that it was a man, that it was suicide.

He spends the next day cleaning out the other room. There are no horrific surprises, and while he blocks out the window and changes out the bulb in the light to red, and starts checking on light seepage from the old, ill-fitted door, his conversation with Parse the previous day starts to fester.

He just wanted to do something that mattered. He wanted to be the first out NHL player, but he couldn’t even do that right, because he’s not an NHL player anymore, he’s not anything anymore, he’s just – he’s a hockey robot that can’t play hockey, which is like being a calculator that can’t add. He is, at the most basic functional level, completely useless.

Eric appears from nowhere late that night and finds him in the darkroom, all the lights out. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong, he just kneels down on the floor with him and pulls Jack’s face flush against his chest. Jack holds him as tightly as he dares.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says. “I’m sorry I’m – you don’t deserve to – I’m sorry.”

Eric just makes quieting noises and strokes his hair.

“Please don’t apologise for being you,” Eric says.

“Sorry,” Jack mumbles. Eric snorts and kisses the top of his head. Jack feels warmth spread through him. “You haven’t gotten to see me on any of my good days. You’re always so happy, you shouldn’t be stuck with someone like me.”

“Oh, Jack,” Eric says, putting his knees on either side of Jack’s legs and wrapping around him. “My only good days have been these past few weeks with you.”

And even though that makes him infinitely sadder, it also makes Jack feel just a little bit better. Because sure, Eric seems to have it together, at least better than Jack does, but knowing it’s a recent development gives him hope.

“Now why are you apologising?” Eric asks. He’s still stroking Jack’s hair and has pulled Jack’s face down so it’s buried in the crook of his shoulder. Jack inhales, the scents of mint and Ivory soap filling his nose.

“There’s no point to me,” Jack says. Whispers, really, into the fabric of Eric’s shoulder. “I just take up space. I don’t mean anything. It just--”

He barely hears Eric breathe out, “Jack,” in the most heartbroken voice Jack’s ever heard.

“Just, sometimes I think I was supposed to stay dead when I was seventeen,” he mumbles.

“Jack Zimmermann, I need you to promise me something,” Eric says, pulling Jack’s face off his shoulder and holding it between both hands. Jack can do nothing but look him in the eye. He doesn’t remember Eric turning on the light when he came in, but he must have because Jack can actually see him.

“What?” Jack asks, holding Eric’s wrist. He might pull Eric’s hand away from his face, but he doesn’t want to.

“Please promise me that you’ll never, ever give up,” Eric says. “Because you have a beautiful heart, and people like me need it to be here. Please.”

Jack feels himself nod. He hears himself say that he promises, and then Eric’s standing up and pulling him to his feet.

“You’re developing your pictures, right?” he asks. Jack nods. “Would you teach me?”

*

Jack’s pictures hang around the darkroom. Once they’re dry, he and Eric take them into the living room and lay them out on the coffee table so they can look. The pictures of the fog came out exactly the way Jack wanted them to, the light refracting in the perfect way to capture the right amount of sunlight even though there hadn’t been much. The pictures of the trees are haunting against the white skies, and Jack wants to hang one in his bedroom. He also needs to scan them and post them to his Instagram.

His favourites are the ones of Eric though. Even in the grey light of the kitchen, he’s luminous and golden, a soft smile on his face while he wears Jack’s Falcs shirt. He’s wearing it again, Jack realises. Then he realises it’s probably been a week since Eric’s actually left his house. He can’t really find it in himself to care.

“Jack, these are beautiful,” Eric says, picking up one of the creek with all its eddies of yellow leaves. “You know, I just realised. I gave you a picture of me, but you haven’t returned the favour.”

“Sorry,” Jack says. He’s not sure he has any pictures of himself lying around that he can offer, but he resolves to take one.

“Don’t be sorry, just get me a picture of my incredibly handsome boyfriend,” Eric says, grinning at him.

Jack smiles and kisses him.

“Hey, so my friend Shitty is going to be here tomorrow,” Jack says. “I’d really like you to meet him. Apparently he found out who my ghost is.”

“He did?” Eric asks, his eyes going huge. “Wow, that’s – wow.”

“Yeah,” Jack agrees. He shrugs. “It should be interesting. He seemed pretty worked up about it.”

Actually, he hadn’t, which was in itself a giveaway. Shitty got worked up about nothing, so something as big as finding out who was haunting Jack’s house was supposed to be something he went nuts over. The fact that he hadn’t made Jack sort of curious.

Eric nods and snuggles up against Jack’s chest. “I guess I should make pie then.”

“You don’t have to,” Jack says.

“I like making pie,” Eric replies. “And what kind of pie does your friend – uh – is his name really…”

Jack kind of wants to chirp him, give him a little bit of grief about the fact he can have Jack’s cock in his mouth but he can’t say “Shitty.” Although now that he thinks about it, he’s not sure he’s ever heard Eric swear.

“It’s B, technically,” Jack says. “B. Simeon Knight III. But as he explained it, it’s a shitty name, so he just goes by that instead.”

Eric snorts. “Well speaking as Eric Richard Bittle the fourth, I can empathise. What kind of pie does…Shitty…like?”

“He said indecent things about your cranberry muffins,” Jack replies. “I’m pretty sure he’ll eat anything.”

“Pecan it is,” Eric says.

Jack spends the afternoon watching him bake, and thinks to himself that this could be the beginnings of happiness. Real, good happiness.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Eric asks after he’s taken the second pecan pie out of the oven. He runs a hand through Jack’s hair and sits across his lap. “After what we talked about the other day.”

“I’m--” He’s not okay, necessarily, but he’s resolved to do the work it takes to get there. “I’m working on it.”

“And you’re not going to give up, even when it’s hard?” Eric asks, pressing a soft kiss to Jack’s temple, and then the corner of his eye, his eyelid when Jack obligingly closes his eyes.

“I promise,” Jack says. It’s easier to keep a promise like that when there’s someone else to hold him accountable.

“That’s all I want,” Eric says, kissing him. His tongue traces Jack’s bottom lip, and Jack wants nothing more than to return the favour. The kiss gets deeper, more intense, and Jack feels himself start to get hard. From the way Eric’s squirming in his lap, it’s a mutual problem.

Eric breaks away from the kiss breathing heavily and Jack doesn’t stop himself from kissing Eric’s neck until he gasps.

“Jack can we – can we have sex?” Eric asks.

“Haven’t we been?” Jack replies, and then he remembers this is Eric, who doesn’t swear and probably has a similarly limited view of what actually constitutes sex.

“I mean like, uh,” Eric stammers, biting his bottom lip until Jack has to free it using his own teeth as gently as possible. “I mean I want you inside me.”

Jack’s breath hitches. “Yeah, we can do that,” he agrees, kissing him again. He thinks there’s a hint of desperation in Eric’s kiss, in the way his hands pull at Jack and drag him up the stairs, in the way he pulls off Jack’s clothes, there’s an urgency. Jack wants to tell him to slow down, because they’ve got time. Shitty will probably kill him if he doesn’t have the conversation with Eric at some point about “what is sex exactly,” and they’ve got time for that, too. The world is full of endless possibility, and it’s the first time Jack’s felt like that, maybe ever. It was always just…hockey. That was the only possibility.

After, Eric holds him so tightly Jack’s pretty sure he’s going to leave a bruise. He knows he’s left a few hickeys on Eric in places that aren’t appropriate, but he likes it and he’s pretty sure Eric does, too.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Eric whispers into Jack’s skin right as Jack’s falling asleep.

“I’m sorry,” Jack mumbles on reflex, which earns him a smack on the ass. He huffs a sleepy laugh and holds Eric closer, pressing his lips into his soft golden hair. “I love you.”

Eric freezes. “Really?” he asks.

“Yes, really,” Jack says. He knows it’s true even though he hadn’t known until he said it. But he does. He loves him. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, too.”

He feels Eric’s mouth twist into a smile against his shoulder, but just before he falls asleep, he thinks he hears Eric whisper that he’s sorry too.

He wakes in the morning to the sound of his phone buzzing. He groans and opens an eye, picking it up. Shitty’s face is illuminated on the screen.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Shitty crows, clearly already too caffeinated. “I’m on your beautiful porch, open the door.”

Jack groans at him in response and hangs up, rolling over to kiss Eric awake.

“Morning,” he says, kissing Eric on the cheek. “Shitty’s here.”

“I’m naked,” Eric replies.

Jack hands him the Falcs shirt and watches while Eric pulls it on, adorably sleep-rumpled and droopy-eyed. “I love you,” he says, leaning down to kiss Eric again.

He turns around so he can pull on his sweats. When he turns back around to face the bed, Eric is gone. Jack’s heart lurches uncomfortably in his chest. He hadn’t heard Eric get up, hadn’t heard a rustle of the sheets, or footsteps on the floorboards.

He hears footsteps outside the room and figures Shitty must have found the spare key. He throws open his bedroom door, but there’s no one. The door across the hall is shut, but he hears it rattle open even though he can’t see it move. Cautiously, Jack steps forward and opens it. The room hasn’t been disturbed since he’d last been in there to tear down the walls. There are no footprints in the plaster dust, but in the centre of the room, brushed out with two fingers, are the words, _Thank you._

Jack doesn’t know what to feel other than shock as he stumbles down the stairs to let Shitty in.

“Whoa, bro, are you--” Shitty starts. He’s holding a thick file folder.

“What do you know?” Jack demands, dragging Shitty into the living room and taking the file.

“Uh, so I don’t know how to explain it, or like, any of that, but, uh…” Shitty starts. “You – you didn’t take that picture of Eric, right? The one you sent me?”

“No,” Jack says, although he can’t fathom why this is relevant.

“Right,” Shitty says, nodding slowly. He swallows. “Then, Jack? Why was it taken in your kitchen?”

Ice runs down Jack’s spine. He pulls the picture out of his wallet where it’s lying on the table and stares at it. Eric, just like he remembers him, glowing over a pie. Jack’s hands shake while he runs into the kitchen and holds the picture up. The mint green walls behind Eric in the picture match the ones on either side of the kitchen window, and the faded paisley curtains in Jack’s kitchen window left by the previous owners are bright and new in the picture of Eric.

“What did you find?” Jack asks, whirling on Shitty. There aren’t pies on his counter, he notices. There are supposed to be two pecan pies. But there aren’t.

“I found a couple things,” Shitty says. He forces Jack into one of the kitchen chairs and opens the file. “The first thing I found was the official incident report from October 31st, 1951, where, uh, where Eric Richard Bittle IV was cleaning his grandfather’s service weapon and the weapon tragically misfired and killed him instantly.”

Jack is numb.

“And I looked into him, he worked at a bakery over on Main,” Shitty says. “He was only tw--”

“Twenty-three,” Jack says. He can’t breathe right. He turns over the picture of Eric that Eric had given him. In the same handwriting that had written “thank you” on the floor upstairs, it reads _October 29, 1951_. Jack had never bothered to turn it over until then.

He jumps to his feet, swearing when his knee protests, and runs to the living room. The pictures he’d taken of Eric in his Falcs shirt are still there. He hands them triumphantly to Shitty, whose eyes go wide.

“You took these ones, right?” Shitty asks.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees. “See? He was here, he’s real, he’s--”

Shitty taps the pictures right above Eric’s temple. Jack looks. Beneath Eric’s fine blond hair there’s a red trickle, like blood. It’s in both the pictures, both of which capture Eric in three-quarter profile from the right. A turn in Jack’s stomach makes him suddenly glad he can’t see the left side of Eric’s head in the pictures.

“How--”

“I don’t know, bro, you’ve got some spooky shit going on,” Shitty says, squeezing his forearm. “Tell me everything.”

Jack does, starting with his first conversation. As he talks he realises a few things. Eric never pulled out a cell phone. He never mentioned anyone outside his family, his little brother with panic attacks, his grandfather who’d served – apparently in World War I – his dad being the man of the house. He’d never told Jack where he lived. He’d never walked up the street, he’d just simply appeared. Jack had never seen him anywhere besides his own property.

On a horrifying hunch, he drags himself up the stairs to the closet and pulls out the box of things left behind. It had seemed so insignificant at the time, but he picks up the pie pan. It’s the same one Eric had left at his house the first day they met.

“What else did you find?” he asks Shitty, sitting in his hallway. He can see the door, the door to the room where Eric –

“I found a very nice article, written in the nineties,” Shitty says, handing him a magazine clipping. Jack scans the title – _A Brother Remembered –_ and the byline – Jamie Bittle. Then he starts to read.

 

_My brother died when I was thirteen. I was told for the longest time that it was an accident. He was cleaning our grandfather’s WWI service weapon, and it went off by accident, and then he was dead. To anyone reading this today, who wasn’t thirteen years old in 1951, that sounds like a hollow lie, and it is. The truth is my brother killed himself. He was only twenty-three years old._

_We moved away from Georgia when I was two, all the way north to a suburb of Providence, Rhode Island. I was told it was because there were jobs there to help with the war effort, since my dad was too old to fight and that was what he could do. Turns out it was actually because people were starting to whisper that there was something wrong with my brother, Eric. He was all of twelve at the time, and he hadn’t mentioned in so much as passing that he liked girls._

_Once I got older, once I figured out that it was suicide, the dark shame that families don’t talk about, especially good conservative families from Georgia, I tried to imagine what it must have been like for him to grow up gay in the ’40s. When the war was on, everyone was distracted, but after that? After that, all the young men his age were expected to get married, to find themselves a girl. Eric worked in a bakery and made the best pies in Providence. I was only thirteen, so I don’t remember very well, but he didn’t have many friends. I don’t think he ever dated, even secretly, and it was well known he was a constant source of shame to our father._

_I didn’t start to think about it very hard until I was in ’Nam. I wasn’t career military, but my dad told me I had to do my part, so I enlisted. I met my wife there, where she was working as an Army nurse. But I also met a lot of civil rights activists, the kind that marched on Washington in 1963 and then got drafted and couldn’t craft their way out of it. We had a lot of interesting talks, those folks and me. It seemed to me that we wanted a lot of the same things – equal rights and protections, for African-Americans, sure. But I wanted them for my brother, too._

_Now that we’re nearing the 21 st century, now that we’re working on getting better rights for women, I think it’s high time we got them for the gay community, too. I’m a grandfather now, and I’m terrified to think my grandson might grow up with the same sort of pressures my brother did. I was scared when it was my son, too, even though he’s married to a nice girl now. I can’t understand how any parent would want their children to be anything other than themselves, or how they could believe there was something wrong with them for who they chose to love. _

_So in memory of my brother, whose history was left unspoken, swept under the rug, for forty odd years, I want y’all_ _to_ _consider the impact you’re going to have on your children, on your grandchildren, if you leave this world a little bit worse than it is right now._

Jack folds up the article and hands it back to Shitty. He feels like someone’s taken a scraper and carved out his insides. He knows who his ghost was. And now he’s petrified to think he’s really gone.

“It was an op-ed,” Shitty says. “Seems like he was a nice guy, Jamie Bittle.”

“He had panic attacks when he was a kid,” Jack mumbles.

“Jack, I don’t know what’s going on, but come back to Boston with me,” Shitty requests. Begs. “Please. This place, it – it can’t be good for your mental health.”

Jack realises as Shitty says it that in his description of the conversations he’d had with Eric, he had told Shitty about the time he’d died. He’d told him about the fact he didn’t know if he’d meant to overdose, the fact that sometimes he couldn’t tell if he was alive. He thinks that might be worrying Shitty more than the fact Jack fell in love with a ghost.

“I’m not going to do anything,” Jack says. “I made a promise.”

*

Shitty calls him the day before Halloween and announces that he’s coming down for the holiday. Jack lets him in and waits for Shitty’s sharp intake of breath when he sees the living room before he says hello. There are huge prints on the walls, of trees, of houses in the neighbourhood, of the river, of the creek. Pictures of the Providence skyline, of the waterfront, of Montreal, of Samwell. It’s been all of five days and Jack hasn’t stopped taking pictures or making enlarged prints in his darkroom. He’s gained three thousand new followers on Instagram this week alone.

“Wow,” Shitty says.

“He liked my pictures,” Jack says.

“Oh,” Shitty says, like he’s suddenly remembering why he’s there. “Get in the car. We’ve got an errand.”

Jack raises his eyebrow, but he picks up his camera and follows Shitty out to his car. Shitty starts the engine and they drive away from Jack’s house.

“So I did some research,” Shitty says. “And according to the literature, the reason ghosts stick around is because they have unfinished business.”

“The literature?” Jack repeats, raising his eyebrows.

“Hey, if you get to have sex with a ghost, I get to cite my sources as ‘the literature’,” Shitty snaps.

Jack tries to think of a counter argument, but he can’t. “Okay.”

“Ghost stick around because they have unfinished business. And you told me that one of the things Eric said to you was that all he ever wanted was someone to love him,” Shitty says. “Which I’m pretty sure is the reason he…uh…because it was the 1950s and he was gay and he didn’t think anyone ever could.”

Jack’s heart aches as Shitty says it, but he can’t argue with it either.

“And so when you fell in love with him, when you told him that you were in love with him, that was the end of it. His business was finished and he could move on after being stuck in that house for sixty years.”

Jack nods while Shitty parks the car. He doesn’t know where they are. It’s not a part of town he’s been in, but it’s pretty. There’s a green lot, bordered by trees, and a small…church.

He looks closer at the green lot and sees the standing stones.

“Come on,” Shitty says, turning off the car and getting out. Jack follows him. “I thought you might want to say goodbye.”

They walk across the slick grass, the faint rain drizzling on them like a cloud trying to envelop them. Jack pulls out his camera, just barely catching the piece of paper that flutters out of his camera bag before it hits the ground. It’s a picture of him, he realises. He thinks Lardo must have taken it, back in his junior year. Back when he was twenty-three.

He swallows the lump in his throat and they stop at a grave. It’s simple, just a granite slab.

_Eric Richard Bittle_

_1928-1951_

“They couldn’t bury him in the church yard,” Shitty says. “Because--”

“Because you can’t bury suicides in consecrated ground,” Jack mutters, staring at the grave. It isn’t poorly maintained, but it’s mossy. He wants to clean it off, but he doesn’t have the tools.

“I’ll give you a minute,” Shitty says. He heads off down the rows, finding interest in a small mausoleum a respectful distance away.

Jack turns back to the grave.

“It feels kind of stupid,” he says. “How can I miss someone who died forty years before I was born? But I do, I miss you, and I loved it, I loved waking up next to you, and I loved talking to you, and the way you somehow made me feel like I’m not pointless. I loved _you_. And I’m so sorry that somehow I was the first person who could see how amazing you were, and I wish – I don’t know. I wish I’d been born earlier, because then maybe you wouldn’t be dead and I wouldn’t be alone. Shitty thinks that you needed me, that that’s why you could move on. But I think I might have needed you too.”

He has to pause to attempt to dry his eyes. It doesn’t work very well.

“And I think I promised you this,” he says, leaning the picture of himself against the headstone. “Mostly I just wanted to say…to say damn you for making me promise. But I won’t. I won’t give up. I’m going to keep my promise. And I hope that, wherever you are now, I hope that you’re okay. That you’re happy. And that you know part of me is always going to love you.”

He falls silent and closes his eyes because he can’t look at the name engraved on stone any longer. In the distance, he hears Shitty’s footsteps get closer, and a hand squeeze his elbow.

“Are you alright?” Shitty asks softly.

Jack sniffs and nods once in response.

“Let’s stop by the grocery store and get a disgusting amount of chocolate,” Shitty suggests.

Jack agrees and opens his eyes. Shitty’s already heading back to the car, but Jack takes one more look at the stone.

The picture he’d put there is gone. In its place, a single sprig of mint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS  
> During the course of this fic, a character's suicide is discussed. In detail. The same character also suffers from extreme internalised homophobia brought about from growing up in the 1950s. It is not pretty.


	2. Chapter 2

He doesn’t appear from nowhere.

Jack watches the young man from the second he turns onto the street and starts heading down it towards Jack’s house. He pauses every so often to check his phone, and Jack’s a little worried, because it’s Thanksgiving and the man looks like he might be hopelessly lost. He’s bundled up against the cold, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder, woolly hat pulled over his ears.

“What are you looking at?” Shitty asks, joining Jack at the window. Lardo’s back in Boston, stuck with her parents for the holiday, but Shitty had done everything he could to avoid dealing with his family. They’ve got a few boxes of Chinese takeout on the coffee table and are planning to watch the History Channel.

“Lost guy,” Jack says, pointing him out.

“Oh, poor bro, he looks cold,” Shitty says. “We should invite him in.”

“Pretty sure he’s looking for something,” Jack says.

“You’re literally the only occupied house on the block,” Shitty says. “All of your neighbours are gone for the holidays.”

“Why do you know that?” Jack asks.

“I do what I can,” Shitty replies, like he’s not stalking all of Jack’s neighbours from a state away. “Someone’s got to make sure none of your other so-called neighbours are really past inhabitants of this house looking to see if they can get Zimmboni to zimm-bone-them.”

Jack punches him in the shoulder, which Shitty accepts as fair, and they go back to watching the lost guy. He stops in the middle of the sidewalk right in front of Jack’s house, looks up at the eaves, and then marches right up the front walk.

“Uh,” Jack says, glancing at Shitty right as there’s a knock on the door.

Shitty shrugs and Jack heads for the door. He opens it to a gust of frigid air and the sound of chattering teeth. Then he exhales sharply, like he’s just been punched in the stomach.

But no.

The fringes of blond sticking out from under the hat are too light, his eyes, somehow, are impossibly bigger, he’s got more freckles, more of a ski-jump to his nose. There’s no lingering sadness, and as the guy instinctively leans towards the warmth coming from Jack’s house, Jack inhales a whiff of cinnamon and sugar.

“Holy mother of Christ, you _are_ Jack Zimmermann. I follow you on Instagram,” the man says. His southern drawl is more pronounced.

“Ain’t he a beaut?” Shitty croons, smacking Jack on the ass and grinning at him. He hasn’t looked at their visitor yet. “And you seemed both lost and cold, so it is my obligation to tell you we have hot toddies, hot buttered rum, and peppermint schnapps for hot chocolate.”

Their visitor’s eyebrows rise high enough that they disappear under his hat.

“Is it customary in Rhode Island to liquor up uninvited guests?” he asks.

Shitty opens his mouth to say something and then looks down at the man on Jack’s steps and just about screams. Maybe he does. Jack’s not sure at which point a high-pitched exhalation technically becomes a scream.

“Why do y’all look like you just saw a ghost?” the man on the steps asks.

“You look _uncannily_ like Jack’s old boyfriend,” Shitty explains.

“Oh. Well, that’s awkward,” the man says, glancing at Jack with an apologetic grimace.

“Very, since he died a while ago,” Shitty continues. “You’re sure you’re not a ghost, right?”

“Fairly certain,” the man says, giving Shitty a strange look. “Actually, I don’t suppose y’all could point me in the right direction? My grandpa used to own a house on this street, and I was hopin’ to use it for a place to crash, but I can’t find it.”

“What was your grandpa’s name?” Jack asks. He knows the answer before the man speaks.

“Jamie Bittle,” he says.

“You have found Jamie Bittle’s childhood home,” Shitty says, pulling Jack away from the door and letting this new Bittle inside.

“Oh,” the man says. “Sorry to intrude on your Thanksgiving. I’m Eric. Eric Richard Bittle. But everyone back home calls me Dicky or Junior and I kind of hate both of those.”

“You prefer Eric,” Jack says. His voice sounds hollow, and he’s clinging to the fact Shitty can apparently see this Eric Bittle like a lifeline.

Eric’s doppelgänger gives Jack an odd look. “I mean, sure, if I have to pick between Eric, Dicky, or Junior. But the guys in college started calling me Bitty and that sort of just…stuck.”

“Where’d you go to school?” Shitty asks, pulling out his phone. Jack knows without looking that he’s going to google this Bitty and see if he can find proof of existence.

“Up in Boston,” Bitty says. He’s holding onto the strap of his duffle bag like he’s nervous or like he’s going to cut and run any second, and suddenly, Jack needs nothing in the world more than he needs Bitty to stay where he is.

“You can stay,” Jack blurts. Shitty and Bitty both stare at him. “Here. I mean. Didn’t you say you were looking for your grandpa’s house so you could stay somewhere?”

“Oh! Yeah, I guess I did,” Bitty says. “I was sort of expecting it to be unoccupied, though.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Shitty says.

“Oh, no, you didn’t,” Bitty replies, giving Jack a sort of obvious once over. Jack feels heat burn in his face, his chest, his entire body.

“Wow, you’re really the sixth dude in your family named Eric Richard Bittle?” Shitty asks, looking up from his phone.

“Yeah,” Bitty says, finally setting down his duffle bag. He unbuttons his coat and hangs it neatly on the coatrack. In his thin red sweater, Jack can see that Bitty is more muscular than Eric, more athletic. Less troubled, but also less innocent.

“Emerson, huh?” Shitty asks, sticking his phone back in his pocket.

“Did you just Facebook stalk me?” Bitty asks. He pulls off his hat to reveal an undercut that suits him quite well, his honey blond bangs falling into his chocolate eyes. He’s a little prettier than Eric, too, or maybe just more comfortable in his own skin.

“You’re Facebook friends with Justin Oluransi,” Shitty says. Jack wants to participate in the conversation, but he can’t stop staring at Bitty. He’s…what? Eric’s great-nephew? But they could be twins.

“Everyone who went to school in Boston from 2012-2016 is Facebook friends with Justin Oluransi,” Bitty says with a laugh. “It’s funny, actually, I almost went to school with him. We would’ve been on the same hockey team and everything.”

“You play hockey?” Jack asks.

“Just club in college,” Bitty says. “Why?”

“Uh, he’s Jack Zimmermann,” Shitty points out.

Bitty frowns at him. “Yeah, the photographer?”

The hot flash that had gone through Jack’s chest when Bitty looked at him is replaced by a burning warmth.

“Shitty and I played together at Samwell,” Jack explains. “With Justin. And I kinda…played for the NHL for a while.”

“Well, shoot, knew I shoulda gone to Samwell,” Bitty says with a dramatic sigh.

“Why?” Jack asks, because this can’t be real life, but maybe…maybe it is.

Bitty raises an eyebrow at him. “Any chance to ogle your beautiful ass, Mr. Zimmermann, is a chance that should be taken.”

Shitty cackles with glee. “Jack, Jack, can we keep him?”

Bitty laughs and then pulls his phone out of his pocket to silence it. It buzzes again almost immediately and he rolls his eyes and throws it to the couch. He eyes the Chinese food containers.

“Who’s calling?” Shitty asks.

“My ex-boyfriend,” Bitty says, rolling his eyes again. “It’s been two months and he keeps calling, all, ‘but I still love you.’ Like, no, Kyle, if you loved me, you’d give better head than that.”

Jack chokes on his own spit while Shitty’s eyes grow huge with delight and he crosses the living room to wrap his arms around Bitty.

“I love him,” Shitty informs Jack.

“Now tell me, are y’all really eating Chinese takeout on Thanksgiving?” Bitty asks.

“Yeah,” Shitty says.

“Then I’m sorry, you have to let go of me,” Bitty says. “Jack, where’s the kitchen?”

“Over there,” Jack says, pointing.

“Give me like an hour, there’ll be something that looks like Thanksgiving dinner,” Bitty promises. “It’s the least I could do after y’all so kindly let me in.”

Jack can’t help but follow him into the kitchen and leans in the doorway while Bitty exclaims at the colour.

“Wow, I apologise in advance,” Bitty says. “I’m not sure it’s possible to make something in here that doesn’t taste like mint.”

The pang in Jack’s heart hurts less now, but he doesn’t think too much about it while he watches Bitty rifle around in his cabinets. It takes him four tries to find the pans, another three to find the cutting boards, two to find the larder. He hums to himself while he goes, some pop song that Jack doesn’t know.

“What?” Bitty asks after a minute, once he catches Jack staring at him.

“You follow me on Instagram?” Jack asks.

Bitty flushes. “Oh. Yeah. You take amazing pictures,” he says. “Although, I gotta be honest, I kinda thirst-followed you back when you posted some workout pic.”

“Must’ve been back when I had a knee made out of cartilage and a hip made out of bone,” Jack replies.

Bitty looks him over again. “I dunno, you still look pretty damn hot to me.”

It’s Jack’s turn to flush while Bitty scratches absently at the sleeve of his sweater. “Do you always flirt this much with complete strangers?”

“Only the very, very cute ones,” Bitty replies, flashing him a grin. He starts to scratch at his sleeve more insistently, and then finally gives up and rolls it up. A sprig of green falls from his skin, a smear left behind from the leaves he’d crushed scratching.

“What on earth?” Bitty asks, picking up the fallen stem. “Mint doesn’t even grow right now.”

Jack knows it’s a sign. It’s some sort of sign from Eric, and for the first time, he finds himself hoping for one particular answer. He hopes that it’s permission.  

“Weird,” Jack says, attempting a casually confused smile. It must work, or come close enough, because Bitty shrugs and places the sprig in a glass of water.

“It might root,” he explains. “Do you have any potatoes?”

Jack produces them from a dark bottom drawer and accidentally finds Eric’s pie plate. He tries to push it back into the drawer but Bitty pulls it out and inspects it.

“This thing is like some kind of antique,” he says. His eyes light up. “I don’t suppose y’all have a pumpkin? Or a can of pumpkin fillin’ even?”

Jack does have a sugar pumpkin, because Shitty had bought it at the grocery store while high out of his mind. He knows how to gut the thing and pull the insides out while Eric works on stuffing and doing something nice to the chicken breasts Jack has frozen in his freezer.

“Only thing I miss about going to Thanksgiving with my family,” Bitty says. “My dad’s mom makes a mean pumpkin pie.”

“Why aren’t you there?” Jack asks.

“Oh,” Bitty says, suddenly going glum.

“It’s not because you date guys named Kyle who are bad at blow jobs, is it?” Jack asks. Part of him wants to clap a hand over his mouth and apologise, and the other part is laughing at him.

Bitty snorts. “Oh my gosh, he was so bad. But, uh, just a little. My grandparents on my dad’s side, they never really talked to each other? They were all estranged and stuff, but no one would ever tell me why until a couple years ago when I came out to my parents, and turns out it’s because my grandpa was a huge gay rights activist because his older brother was gay in the ’40s and my grandma’s not about that, so it was kinda hard to sit across from her at the dinner table after that.”

While he talks, he’s squishing the potatoes with a proficiency that makes the muscles in his arms stand out, the minty green stain still on the inside of his forearm. Jack kind of wants to kiss him.

“And then I was driving through Providence, thinking maybe I should go back to Boston see if friends were around, and it was the weirdest thing, right, because I was driving past some tiny little cemetery and all of a sudden I remembered about my grandpa’s old house. And of course, lo and behold, it’s currently being lived in by my favourite Instagrammer.”

Jack knows exactly which cemetery it was. But he doesn’t think he can explain that just yet, so he settles for asking why Bitty can just float around. It turns out he runs social media for a few start-ups which he can do from anywhere, so he’s been drifting since he graduated.

Shitty is drawn to the kitchen by lack of company and the smell of pumpkin and he when he sees Jack and Bitty there, he beams and drags Jack back into the living room for a moment.

“I will be sleeping on the couch,” Shitty informs him. He says this with significance and a wink and a nod in Bitty’s direction.

“I don’t have a guest room,” Jack says. He might someday, but he’s not sure he can ever stand the idea of letting someone sleep in Eric’s old room.

“Then I guess you’d better seduce that man before it gets time to go to sleep,” Shitty replies, pinching Jack’s cheek.

“You’re--”

Jack starts to say that Shitty’s a terrible friend, but he can’t bring himself to, even as a glib remark. Because Shitty had been with him all through Samwell, and beyond that, Shitty had believed him about Eric. Shitty is the opposite of a terrible friend.

“Love you, Shits,” Jack says.

“Love you too, Jackie,” Shitty replies, patting him on the face and returning to the kitchen. Jack hears Bitty squeak when Shitty presumably pokes him in the side, and Jack thinks to himself that maybe, somehow, he’s going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I told you it had a happy ending.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song "Say You'll Haunt Me" by Stone Sour that I didn't mention at the beginning because it seemed...telling. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who participated in the 13 Days of Halloween challenge, and everyone who read them. This fic was the whole reason I created the thing, so it's nice to finally share it with people since it's been sitting on my harddrive for two months now. 
> 
> Thank you and maybe I'll see you all next year?


End file.
